Personal Finance Resources
This page is a live list of continually updated personal finance resources for sex workers, including:
If you know of a sex work-friendly resource you’d like to see listed here, email me at LolaDavina at protonmail dot com.
Please note: I am not a tax, financial, legal, or investment advisor, and nothing I offer here should be construed as professional advice. The information offered here is a starting point for research—do your due diligence.
tax preparation (U.S.)
Christopher Kirk is an attorney with a specialty in taxation, so he is doubly qualified to help sex workers navigate their tax and legal obligations. For a taste of his sex-work specific advice, check out his blog here. Christopher can help U.S.-based sex workers, and works remotely.
Jessie Susannah Karnatz (a.k.a. The $Money Witch$) is a CTEC Registered Tax Preparer, helping sex workers, artists, and other creatives with their bookkeeping and tax preparation needs. Jessie can work with U.S.-based sex workers, and she does work remotely.
Jessie offers an invaluable downloadable PDF checklist of tax deductions for sex workers, updated annually, as well as for AirBnB hosts, artists, and small business owners.
Mistress Lori St. Kitts wrote the sex worker tax bible—literally! Lori is a tax preparer specializing in the adult industry. Lori can assist U.S.-based sex workers, and works remotely.
The official H&R Block blog is chill answering sex work-related questions, and anecdotally, I’ve heard they are indeed sex work-friendly.
personal finance apps & websites
Apps and websites I’ve personally used noted with an asterisk*; otherwise, I’m recommending these resources based on reviews, reputation, and longevity.
Personal Finance Advice
*Suze Orman If I had to list only one personal finance pro to listen to, it would be Suze. In a world filled with folks who want to help you spend your money, Suze is tireless in letting you know when you can’t afford it. Whether or not you groove on her style, if you follow her advice, you will manage your money wisely. Her website is thorough and kept well up-to-date on any changes in the law or the economy. I especially recommend her advice on credit/debt, saving, investing, and student loans.
*Erin Lowry, Broke Millennial Erin is the Millennial’s Suze Orman, and I love how she breaks down life-long financial wisdom into easy-to-understand language. Again— do what she tells you, you will do well. Both of her books, Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life in Order and Broke Millennial Takes on Investing: A Beginner’s Guide to Leveling Up Your Money are terrific, along with a great blog and YouTube videos. You can also hire her as a consultant— she is sex worker-friendly.
*Nerd Wallet Financial services comparison website. A personal fav, with all kinds of excellent tools and advice in everyday language, aimed squarely at the Millennial set. Compare savings rates, credit cards, and student loan rates. Nerd Wallet is refreshingly upfront about how they make their money: They get paid for click-throughs and completed loan approvals, but they claim this has no impact on their recommendations— they’re just there to present the best options. Well worth spending an hour or so looking through everything to discover what they offer.
*Bank Rate If Nerd Wallet is the hip personal finance comparison website for younger adults, Bankrate.com is the Gen X version. Can be technical and jargony, so I don’t recommend BR for novices, but it has all kinds of invaluable articles for investing, shopping for mortgages, and retirement instruments. Like Nerd Wallet, BR makes its money through referrals, although they don’t bother to mention that on their website. (Boo!)
*Wise Bread Perhaps my fav website for frugal living. Most of the personal finance advice you can get elsewhere, but WB has all different kinds of ways of thinking about spending/using less while living more. Also, they disclose their advertising model right at the tippy-top of their homepage—I approve.
Dough Roller Comparison website. Just my opinion— for most topics, I think Nerd Wallet or Bank Rate does it better. But DR has up-to-the-moment advice on how to avoid home foreclosure during the COVID-19 crisis. If you’re behind on your mortgage in 2020, I encourage you to check them out.
Clever Girls Know Bola Sukunbi is a true personal finance superstar, with a terrific head for small business. I love listening to her podcasts, and she has terrific YouTube videos as well. Smart, relatable, someone you wished you knew personally, and she offers much of her information on her website for free. Definitely check her out, whether you consider yourself a clever girl or not.
Investing
*Fidelity Financial and investment services company. You can open a regular investment account online (a.k.a. a brokerage account) with basic personal information (birthdate, legal name, Social Security number,) and a bank account. If you want to open your account with cash, you can do so IRL at a Fidelity branch. It only takes a few minutes, and there is no minimum deposit to get started. Fidelity can also manage your retirement investment accounts, including IRAs, Roth IRAs, 401(k)s, etc. Unlike Schwab, Fidelity does charge for transactions—buying and selling stocks, bonds, ETFs, etc., just FYI.
Once you’ve opened an account, you have access to financial advisors who can help you invest in stocks, bonds, ETFs, mutual funds, and much more. For an excellent breakdown of what a financial advisor will help you with, read here.
I’ve been loyal to Fidelity for 20+ years because when I was still doing full service sex work and terrified about investing my first few hundred dollars in the stock market, I was treated like a Rockefeller, with a dedicated financial advisor who went out of her way to help me get started. Changed my life.
Charles Schwab Much like Fidelity, you can open an investment and/or retirement account with no minimum deposit. Schwab has long has a good reputation for helping individual investors, and doesn’t charge for online trades, which is important when making small trades or lots of trades— transaction fees can add up in a hurry.
SoFi SoFi started out as a well-reviewed student- and personal-loan company, and has since expanded to banking and investment services. A tidy solution if you’re feeling the need to see your entire money picture in one place. Check out their student loan consolidation refinancing products as well.
*Robinhood Commission-free investment app. No charge for buying and selling shares—they make their money with a pay-for upgrade and fees for more advanced transactions. I enjoy RH— it’s intuitive and easy to use, but with serious limitations you should be aware of.
Pros: RH allows you to buy stocks, index funds, and ETFs with a few taps on your phone. RH is now offering interest on uninvested cash.
Cons: RH allows you to buy cryptocurrencies and execute options with a few taps on your phone, neither of which I recommend or encourage for a beginning investor. At all.
RH does not allow you to buy mutual funds or bonds, or to fund tax-advantaged retirement accounts (such as IRAs, 401(k)s, etc.) RH does not allow for automatic dividend reinvestment or the purchase of partial shares (at least for now). Allow me to be frank: Those limitations are bullshit. Money Bosses buy bonds, Money Bosses fund their retirement accounts, Money Bosses reinvest their dividends. So I view RH as more of a toy than a serious investment tool.
Additionally, research is basic to the point of remedial, with no personalized financial advice. Oh, yeah, there’s this, too— the RH platform crashed several times during the wild swings of the COVID-19-induced stack market crash in April 2020. That ain’t great, and keeps it from being a reliable executor of trades during periods of high market volume. (Meaning: Don’t use RH to become a day-trader.)
Upshot: RH is fine for dipping your toe into the stock market, and is a free, easy way to make small trades. However, when planning your retirement and investing meaningful money, get a real brokerage account at Fidelity or Schwab or SoFi and get some real financial advice.
Investopedia IMHO, I don’t think anything beats a real-life conversation with a financial advisor for investment advice, especially when just getting started. However, plenty of folks disagree with me, and believe algorithms do a better job of recommending investment strategies than humans do and at a much lower cost. Whichever way you decide, if you want to learn more about investing on your own, Investopedia provides free investment and finance education. It’s sane, reliable, and relatively beginner-friendly.
Acorns, Stash and Clink I think what are called “Spare Change” apps are a great idea—at least in theory. Every purchase you make, the app rounds the total up to the next nearest dollar, and deposits those pennies into an investment or savings account. It’s a no-brained way to slowly, steadily, and painlessly save/invest, and is especially helpful for folks who are brand spankin’ new to investing. After you set it up once, these apps allow you to buy into low-cost index funds or ETFs which offer broad exposure to the entire stock market with zero effort.
The devil is in the details, unfortunately. These apps charge fees— Acorns, for example, charges, $1/month— which might not seem like much, but depending on how much you accumulate, it can get pricey. If the app collects a dollar a day on average, in a year you’ll have $365 to invest, but $12 in fees take nearly 4% right off the top. That’s a pretty big bite. Also, once you’ve accumulated over $5,000, the annual fees jump, so you need to be careful. Also, both Acorns and Stash are limited in the instruments you can invest in. Which is 100% fine when you’re starting out and just need some help in learning how to flex your investing muscles, but not adequate for the longterm.
Upshot: If an app gets you to start putting money aside, even if it’s just small amounts at first, that’s a good thing. And a year or two of fees won’t do permanent damage while you’re getting the hang of investing. Just be sure to research your options and understand how the app works so you’re not spending more than you’re saving/investing.
Tracking & Budgeting
Quoting from Sex Work and Money:
“I know this advice makes me sound like a granny, but here I go anyway: I recommend tracking your sex work finances on your phone if and only if:
Ø Your job is 100% legal.
Ø You declare 100% of the funds you track.
Ø You 100% understand and approve of your app’s profit model.
Ø You’re hypermeticulous about keeping your phone safe, locked, and encrypted.
If you can’t check each of those items off with a righteous ‘Hell yes!,’ then my advice is to go old school. Every single sexy worker who ever lived before the digital age managed to keep track of their ill-gotten gains offline, and you can too.
Ultimately, what’s most important about whatever tracking method you choose, whether digital or analog, is that it’s intuitive, secure, and that you actually use it.”
With all that in mind, there are any number of excellent tracking and budgeting apps and tools out there, some free, some pay-for.
Mint app has been a consistent leader in this space for more than a decade, so be sure to take a look.
GoodBudget app is based on the envelope method, meaning you set aside lump amounts each month for various categories, which is an intuitive and flexible system for many people.
NerdWallet updates their budgeting apps reviews regularly, so do your research.
NerdWallet also offers a free budget worksheet, which can be helpful if you’re just getting started, along with a terrific free 50/30/20 calculator. Invaluable!
Credit Counseling
If you find yourself unable to manage your debts on your own, I recommend finding expert help. Unfortunately, there’s no accreditation for this job title. Anyone can hang out a shingle and call themselves a credit counselor. From what I read, unscrupulous actors claim they’ll help you pay off your debts and repair your credit, but they’re no more than scams, charging hefty fees without offering real assistance.
In contrast, the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC) has a long-standing reputation for helping folks take control of their financial lives. They’re nonprofit, so while their services aren’t free, last time I checked an initial consultation cost $14. For-profit credit counselors happily charge many times that.
NFCC helps with all kinds of debt, including student loans. They’ll perform an audit of your current situation, steer you to programs that work best for your goals, and help you apply for any federal, state, or nonprofit assistance programs you qualify for.
For a helpful explanation of what a credit counselor does, check out this interview with the Director of Education and Marketing for Consumer Credit Counseling Services, an Oakland-based nonprofit dedicated to helping folks get out and stay out of debt.